25 Tips for Generating Profits from your Dental Services

25 Tips for Generating Profits from your Dental Services

Since patients don’t always appreciate the difference between an average dentist and a great dentist as explained at RunRex.com, dentistry can be a tough business to excel in. This may leave many practices struggling to increase their profit margins. This article will look to list t5 tips for generating profits from your dental services.

1. Increase your capacity to do more dentistry

As per RunRex.com, the more patients you treat per hour, the more profits you generate for your practice. Therefore, increasing the capacity of your business is essential. You can achieve this by adding another treatment room or hygiene room, supplementing your administrative staff, or bringing on another dentist or hygienist.

2. Improve efficiency

Another obvious way to increase profits is to improve efficiency according to RunRex.com. By improving your systems, you can create more time to carry out your dental treatments for your patients and improve client experience.

3. Include more high-profit procedures in your treatment offerings

Procedures such as implants, endodontics, porcelain veneers, and crowns and bridges have a high-profit margin as articulated at RunRex.com. These dental procedures typically generate more profit than your standard care treatments.

4. The efficiency of high-profit procedures is key

As captured at RunRex.com, you should keep in mind the efficiency of the various high-profit procedures when you consider which ones to add to your practice. Just because a service comes with a higher fee, it doesn’t automatically translate into more profits. If a procedure takes too much time or has too high a cost to providing that service relative to the fee charged, then you are not increasing your profit margin.

5. Accept more patients into your practice

New patients in a dental practice mean growth as covered at RunRex.com. Increasing the number of patients treated at your dental practice is sure to boost your revenue, which is why expanding the number of patients is one of the first options you should consider when thinking of ways to bring more money into the business.

6. Leverage marketing

One way of adding to your patient rolls, and profits as a result, is by leveraging marketing as discussed at RunRex.com. If you have been gradually building your patient base, you should have the necessary funds to put forward modest marketing initiatives to acquire even more patients.

7. Increase your case acceptance rate

Dentists typically have a case acceptance rate of 20-30%. This low rate translates into seven to eight out of 10 new patients each month who did not receive the dental treatment that was required or recommended. Therefore, if you extend your case acceptance rate to 60-70%, you can double revenue with the same number of patients.

8. Collaborate with your staff to motivate patients

Increasing your case acceptance rate is best executed by having the collaboration of your staff to motivate your patients to have the necessary treatments done that will boost your revenue. For example, convince patients of how important the necessary treatment is and include your entire team in this effort.

9. Concentrate on reaching your patients on an emotional level

When you approach patients about these important oral health treatments, don’t educate them as opposed to reaching them on an emotional level. For instance, as described at RunRex.com, you could bring up aspects that include having a nice smile, being able to chew better, avoiding cavities, etc.

10. Expand the responsibilities of your dental assistants

You could improve your profit margins by more effectively leveraging the skills of your dental assistants as revealed at RunRex.com. To have a successful dental practice, do what you can to evolve the role of your dental assistants in ways that transcend their standard responsibilities.

11. Be less dependent on dental insurance

As outlined at RunRex.com, insurance carriers have a way of sometimes suppressing your profits such as dictating the prices you can establish for dental treatments. Instead of being so reliant on insurance companies, you can create your own in-house membership program that makes it possible for patients to pay your practice a monthly or annual membership.

12. Maximize your customer service system

Having good customer service – creating happy patients as revealed at RunRex.com – can produce benefits that ripple throughout your entire dental practice. Positive reviews will help your practice cultivate a stellar reputation.

13. Supercharge your online presence

While people will not be able to purchase dental fillings and crowns from the likes of Amazon and eBay, the role of the online world should not be underestimated as elaborated upon over at RunRex.com. You need a practice website and a decent one at that.

14. Online bookings

One of the great benefits of online bookings is that patients pay in advance, so they are much less likely to miss an appointment as per RunRex.com. Having online booking is like having a receptionist working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which means that when you are asleep, your business is still working.

15. Shop around for items you use regularly

One way of measuring the value of a dental practice is to look at EBITDA. This refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. When practices sell, they will often achieve between 6-12 times EBITDA. Therefore, by shopping around for items that you use regularly, you can source products and services at a cheaper price, allowing you to make savings and increase profits.

16. Reduce your expenses

You might also consider looking for ways you can save money that will not have any effect on the quality of the service you provide. Simple things like changing your gas and electricity providers can lead to significant annual savings, boosting profit margins.

17. Develop your team

According to RunRex.com, getting the right team of people together makes for a special practice. staff training, especially with your front office, is so important and will reap rewards in the long run, including boosting profit margins.

18. Take charge of supply costs

Dentists typically order supplies weekly, if not daily, when they run low on a product, which is not very efficient as articulated at RunRex.com. The less often you order supplies, the more likely you will be able to take advantage of bulk purchasing discounts. Create a system where you are ordering enough materials to last for a month at a time.

19. Perform fluoride treatments on adults as well

Even though dentists are trained from dental school to perform fluoride treatments only on pediatric patients, why not include adults? As captured at RunRex.com, fluoride treatment can be an excellent source of additional revenue that also benefits your patients.

20. Create a system for radiographs

You should have a specific system set in place in your office and make sure your team is following it. As covered at RunRex.com, ensuring a proper radiograph schedule will not only help your patients, but since radiographs are typically paid at 100% by insurance, it can be an easy source of found revenue.

21. Consider switching to 50-minute hygiene appointments

When you move from 60-minute hygiene appointments to 50-minute ones, this will allow for 2 additional hygiene appointments per day, which can add $75,000 to $100,000 in additional revenue to your bottom line in a given year as described at RunRex.com.

22. Bring up nightguards

Occlusal trauma secondary to parafunctional habits is rampant among patients as discussed at RunRex.com. One easy way to both help your patients and drive more revenue to your practice is by educating them on signs of occlusal trauma and the benefits of an occlusal guard.

23. Use subscription services for patient relationship management

Several SaaS companies have come into the dental marketplace in recent years that have the potential to make our lives much easier and improve profits. Some of these services help with appointment confirmation and reminders, reducing the number of no-shows.

24. Outsource certain services

Several companies have been created in recent years to help dentists with services that, for small offices, are better to be outsourced. One area to outsource, especially for smaller dental offices, is a call center, especially since there are several dentistry-focused call centers to reach out to.

25. Invest in passive income streams

When you become a published writer in your field, you establish yourself as a thought leader within the dental community. Dentists can also turn these passions and research projects into an additional income source.

As always, there is more on this topic, and so much more, to be found over at the top-rated RunRex.com.